Hey everybody, it's Andy and welcome again to my office in Modesto, California. I'm
an attorney licensed to practice law in California as well as New York. In this
video I am going to go over how you make a will in California. So, just to be very
clear, when I talk about wills, I'm referring to, you know, basically, the
document that people create when they get to the end of their life, when they
think they're about to pass away, and in the document, or in their will, they talk
about who they want to leave stuff to, how much to leave each person, etc. So
this video is going to go over how you generally create a document like that in
California. This is actually the second, er, sorry the first video rather, the
first video in a series of two that where I go over the validity of wills
generally. This video is going to go over how to create a will in California. The
second video which I'm going to play a little bit of actually right over here.
I'll link it down with the description for you also, but in the second video, I
go over how California law determines whether or not a will is valid or not.
So if you're watching this video, it might be worth it I think to watch this
video as well as this one, like the one that I'll link down below, to get the
full picture of how to create a will in California that, you know, is going to be
correct. So, I think, well, in general, this is true, but I think in particular it's
true for wills. Whenever you write a document like a letter, a contract, an
email or something, it's important to get it right, but the thing is at the end of
the day, you will hopefully be around to clarify whether any sort of,
you know, misunderstanding, to explain things if it weren't clear. A will is
obviously going to be very different because, you know, if you don't make your
will clear, for instance, or you don't comply with what, you know, you're
supposed to do, you know, in order to make a well valid, you will basically not be
able to fix it, you know, because you're obviously deceased. And the kind of
ramifications of that generally will be left to your heirs, your friends ,your
family, your children, etc to deal with. So a will in particular is a document that
you definitely want to get correct because if you don't, then the stuff that
you want to leave to your spouse, your children, etc. possibly might not go to
your spouse or your children. So, a will, you know, basically it's
something that you definitely want to get correct and do as much research as
you can. Hire a lawyer, etc., whatever works for you. So all of
that said then, this video is going to go over two sections of the California
Probate Code and they are going to be section 6110 as well as section 6111.
6110 is going to be the more heavily used section, I think. 6111 is much
shorter. Actually they're both short. 6110 is like that. 6111, I think
is a little bit shorter, but 6111 is not going to be used probably as
frequently I guess in my experience, but you know your experience might be
different. So, anyway, all of that said then, let's go ahead and delve into
section 6110. So 6110 has several criteria that a will has to meet in
order to be recognized as valid in California. Number one is that the will
has to be in writing. 6111 goes over handwritten wills, but,
you know, when I see in writing it could be handwritten, it could be typed, etc., but
basically it cannot be oral. An oral will is called, you know just in case you're
interested, a nuncupative will. California does not
recognize those, but other states do recognize them for whatever reason. So,
but California does not. So anyway, the first kind of criteria is that the will
in question has to be in writing. Number two is that the will has to be signed by
either the testator, the testator's conservator, or by somebody in the
testator's presence at the testator's direction. What does all that mean? So
first things first, the testator is the person who is creating the will. So the
thing is, if you're creating a will for yourself,
you're the testator. If you're helping your mom or your dad or whoever
create a will, they are the testator. So the testator is going to be the
person who is making the will. So the will, you know the writing in
question, has to be signed by the testator themselves, by the testator's
conservator if, you know the testator has been conserved, or by somebody acting
in the testator's presence and at the testator's direction. So what that last
one means basically is imagine somebody who's trying to make a will who is going
to be mentally present, like mentally they're still fine, but due to
perhaps old age or due to other kind of, you know, medical problems, they are not
physically able to pick up a pen and sign their name anymore. So what they
basically do, hopefully if they still can, is to kind of tell somebody Hey, you know
point to them, like, you know, they point to somebody said 'Hey this is my will. I need
you to sign this for me. Do it in front of me, etc.' That's what, you
know, that's what that third criteria basically means. So talking about
wills I guess is a little bit strange because you do have to account for the
fact that, you know that the person who's making the will might not be physically
able to sign their name, you know, in the way that they otherwise would. So a lot
of times, you know, when you're talking about testators, you're talking
about at the direction of a testator, acknowledgement by the testator, etc. So
anyway back to back to the criteria, number one has to be in writing and
number two has to be signed. So number three I actually get a lot of questions
about and it's actually the witness requirement. So California Probate Code
section 6110 says there has to be at least two witnesses to the signing that
also sign their names to the will. And the witnesses actually have very
specific criteria. So number one they actually have to witness either the
testator signing the will themselves or the testator acknowledging to the
witnesses that this is my signature. So again, think back to somebody who is
elderly, you know, incapable of signing their name, but if they can somehow
communicate that 'Hey, you know, this is my signature on this will' that would be
sufficient. So the witnesses have to witness the, you know, witness all this stuff
happening during the testator's life obviously,
if, you know, the testator has to sign or the testator has to acknowledge. The
last part about witnesses is that the witnesses also have to understand that
what they're signing off on is a will and it's not a permission slip for a
child, it's not a pizza delivery order. It is it will and it's significant because,
you know, it's a testator's last will and testament. So that's what 6110
basically goes over. 6111, um, it basically says that if if a will, for
whatever reason, does not meet any of the criteria that I just described, but the
will is handwritten in the testator's own handwriting, that's fine also. That's
actually called a Holographic Will and California will recognize those just
fine. Probate Code section 6112 I'm not
going to go over, but it kind of presents in a nutshell what happens if,
you know, the there's a dispute about the will, what happens if one of the
witnesses falls away because they're declared invalid for some reason. Yeah, so
6112 I'm not going to go over. If you want to, get in touch and I can, you know,
try to help you with 6112 if you like, but 6112 I'm not going to go over in
this video because problems about how to argue and stuff those are very, very
specific. I can't, you know, tell the camera right now how you should
do your own particular situation. So anyway, yeah, I guess hopefully all of
that makes sense. The second video where I cover validity of wills, that's
actually Probate Code section 6113. That one's actually not
terribly complicated. That last criteria, I think, is going to be kind of a mouthful to
describe, but hopefully, you know, I got I got it out, I guess. We'll see. So anyway,
but in terms of how to make a will, Probate Code section 6110 and
California Probate Code section 6111. Yeah so, anyway, I'm going to link both of
those down in the description for you so go ahead and take a look at that and go
ahead and comment, share, like, subscribe, you know, all that kind of social mediay
stuff and I will talk to you guys next time.
Thanks